Doubleton Abbey

Alright, so, now his Downton Abbey thing has found its way into the very bones of the strip. Nothing to worry about, I’m sure. I’ll pay very close attention to him, I’ll see if he takes “tea.” I’ll put myself on Sconewatch.

As I suggested (not that it required much in the way of Divination) Double Fine Adventure will clear two million dollars easy. Unless Kevin Smith or Joss Whedon decide to Kickstart a movie or whatever, I don’t see this being broken anytime soon. And when you take into account the fact that there are donation tiers beyond what Kickstarter will even let you establish on the official site, they’re almost certainly there already.

I want the game, obviously; but I also want the kind of granular documentation which 2 Player Productions can be relied upon to provide. They did the first season of our show as you might recall, flitting away to realize the dream of longer-form work, and they’ve basically burrowed themselves directly into the meat of the industry. Even when they were here with us, a Double Fine documentary is what they were aiming for. It’s been my experience that making games is essentially impossible, an act which struggles and scrapes against an invisible but universal law. There’s “sausage making,” which is generally considered something people don’t want to see, but creating games is the act of making sausage out of yourself, which is probably worse. I expect slash demand long, silent shots of a comatose Tim Schafer, his viscera spooling into a device of Venusian origin.

I received a game called Hive for my birthday last week, secured on the good word of the Friendly Game Store Person, and it’s functionally crazy superchess plus insects. The pieces are themselves the board, and the unique way each bug skitters occupies a nontrivial portion of my conscious thoughts. It packs up real nice, which is becoming something I actually consider when purchasing physical games now - Flash Duel taught me the advantage of a game that fits easy in the pocket. Hive is free on iOS at the moment because they’re working out some kind of a problem with it, but you can get it now and simply download whatever update they have in the wings. This way, you’ll already know how to play it when Cool Gamer Steve asks you to, and he will be impressed, and you’ll just like shrug or whatever.